Separate but interconnected narratives explore three women's responses to the violence in their personal worlds. Each woman, in her own way, travels toward the bedrock of her own terrible pain, searching for nurture.Through the excavation of their pain, each is brought into closer touch with the complex meaning of choice and freedom. Reviewers say: "Simple, and stunningly lovely, prose!" Publishers Weekly. "The author's elegant writing crosses deftly back and forth over the terrain of fiction, poetry and creative documentary. Her poetic sensibility infuses this book with a fragile beauty. A moving account of the betrayal of innocence." Patricia Seaman, The Globe & Mail. "A novel of startling force and beauty, told in deceptively simple prose by a writer come into her poetic maturity."